Afghans Make Grueling Trek Home

By Pamela Constable, Washington Post,Sunday 18 June 2000; A01

CHINAR, Afghanistan - The brightly painted cargo truck rumbled
along a dusty desert track, piled with bundles of bedding, sacks of
wheat and 24 exhausted people. A mud-walled village appeared around a
bend, and suddenly boys and barking dogs were racing alongside the
truck, escorting it the last mile home.

Mohammadullah, 36, climbed out of the cab and surveyed the ancestral
village he had not seen since 1985, when Soviet rockets sent his
family and neighbors running for their lives--and ultimately across
the border into Pakistan, where they spent the next 15 years in a
rural refugee camp.

In his hand was a large book wrapped in faded blue cloth. He carried
it up a footpath to his brother-in-law's house, where he carefully
unwrapped it and pressed it to his forehead. Then, standing on the
dirt patio, Mohammadullah opened his Koran and searched for a certain
verse.

It says that at times a Muslim must leave his home and travel
abroad to escape the rule of infidels, said the sinewy, bearded
war veteran, who uses one name. Now that time is over for us. I
have been gone 15 years, but I have come back to rebuild my house and
my garden and my country.

During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and the
bloody internal conflict that followed, more than 6 million refugees
fled to Pakistan and Iran. Many have since returned home. But at least
2.6 million remain in the two countries, making them one of the
largest long-term refugee populations in the world.

Since April, tens of thousands of these refugees have been streaming
back into Afghanistan, many sharing the same dream as
Mohammadullah. They have been lured by the government's promise of a
safe return and by the United Nations' modest inducement of $100,
three sacks of wheat and a blue plastic tent for each returning
family.

They have also been persuaded to leave by the diminishing welcome in
their longtime host countries--a trend that has been building since
1996, when Afghanistan's anarchic civil war ended and the Taliban, a
religious militia, took over 90 percent of the country. Now that
stable rule has returned to most of Afghanistan, Pakistan, a political
ally of the Taliban, and Iran, an Islamic theocracy, are eager to
further reduce their refugee burdens. Iran has rounded up thousands of
Afghans whose refugee permits have expired, and both countries signed
agreements with the United Nations this spring calling for 200,000
Afghans to be voluntarily repatriated.

Much of the Western world views the Taliban as an oppressive and
reactionary religious force, and thousands of middle-class Afghans
abroad have no desire to live under its severe Islamic system. But
many rural refugees come from conservative backgrounds and say they
are happy to come home to an orderly, peaceful Islamic state after
years of bloodshed and political upheaval.

We don't try to persuade anyone to return; they have to approach
us, said Yusuf Hassan, an official of the office of the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees in Islamabad, Pakistan. Some [Western]
pressure groups say conditions in Afghanistan are unacceptable for
returnees, but if people say they have no fear of persecution and they
are tired of being in exile, we will facilitate their return.

In Haripur, a city about 50 miles northwest of Islamabad that is
surrounded by wheat fields and refugee villages, 115 Afghan families
signed up last week to join a convoy of 28 trucks that would carry 528
people, including Mohammadullah and his family, on the 250-mile trip
home to villages scattered across the desert south of Kabul. Each
family signed papers stating they were returning of their own free
will. They were uneducated rural folk, and their traditions were
clearly in tune with the Taliban's strict version of Islam: The women
veiled their faces outdoors, the men wore long beards and the elders
did not permit photographs of women or girls.

The Taliban do not bother us, they welcome us back, and they have
good Islamic values, said Abdul Jamil, 42, who signed up to return
to a village called Chakari. Inside his mud house in Haripur, his
wife, Semaque, 35, pointed to a head-to-toe veil hanging on the
wall. My relatives would never let me go out without it, she
said.

But hazards and hardships await these returnees, many of whom are
returning to villages that were destroyed and abandoned years
ago. Most lack health care, electricity and wells to irrigate the
fields. This year, a severe drought has worsened farming and living
conditions, and the United Nations has scaled back its current
repatriation project because so many villages have no water.

The Taliban government, isolated and bankrupt, can offer little
assistance, although it does provide food, medical care and building
supplies to returnees who lost a family member fighting the
Soviets. Politically, the authorities try to accommodate certain
reentry problems; men who arrive with short beards are given time to
grow them without risk of arrest.

We welcome all the refugees home. We do what we can to help them,
and we guarantee their security, Maulvi Abdul Rakim, the Taliban's
minister of martyrs and refugees, said in an interview in Kabul, the
capital. Someone might think they have lost some freedom when they
come here, but we have just as much freedom as other countries; we are
only observing our religious and cultural traditions.

For some returnees, the lack of schools is a major concern. In
Pakistan and Iran, their children had access to public education, but
in Afghanistan many schools were destroyed years ago, and the Taliban
has banned most education for girls older than 12. The United Nations
and other aid groups are building classrooms and training teachers in
some refugee villages. But many, like this village 20 miles southeast
of Kabul, have none.

Land mines are another obstacle to repatriation. Many areas around
Kabul were heavily mined by the Soviets or by warring Afghan
paramilitary forces. In 1993, when some villagers attempted to return
to Chinar, four were killed and 12 others lost limbs when they stepped
on mines. Now, after several years of intensive mine clearance, the
area has been declared safe.

Finally, there is the threat of renewed fighting. While most of
Afghanistan is under Taliban control, armed resistance forces hold
positions as close as 30 miles north of Kabul. In Haripur last week,
many refugees said they did not want to risk returning until peace was
complete and the economy was on surer footing.

None of us will be happy until we are home, but we can't go
yet, said Hajji Malang, 32, a former Afghan freedom fighter
with a missing thumb whose eight children were born in the Haripur
camps. Everything is broken in Afghanistan. We need to go back and
rebuild the country. When the fighting stops, I too will go.

Some refugees make periodic trips back to test the waters, to attend a
family wedding or to check on a piece of land. Sometimes those who
sign up for U.N.-assisted repatriation have no intention of remaining
in Afghanistan, but are eager to accept the donated money and
wheat. Then, their visit complete, they head back across the busy,
porous checkpoints into Pakistan.

For three days before the convoy left Haripur last week, U.N. staff
members interviewed each family that had registered, looking for
telltale signs of insincerity. Was the whole family planning to go?
What belongings were they packing? Were they dismantling their houses
to save the beams and windows? Even leaving a teapot behind could
signal that the departure was temporary.

Most families passed the test, but one man was disqualified after
admitting he had purchased wooden poles to make it appear he was
moving his house. Another confessed he was single but had registered
to travel with his brother's wife. The caravan was delayed for two
days while other families signed up and more cargo trucks were located
and rented.

Finally, before dawn on June 9, 28 trucks heaped with chicken coops,
children, electric fans, string beds and roof beams chugged out of
Haripur and headed north. At noon they crossed the Khyber Pass into
Afghanistan, where Taliban officials checked their papers and waved
them through. By nightfall the refugees were lined up outside the
U.N. office in Jalalabad to receive their $100 and sacks of
wheat--some of which they would later sell for more cash.

The next morning, the journey resumed at a tortuous crawl. The sun
beat down mercilessly on families perched atop their belongings, and
the drivers swerved around endless craters in the 110-mile highway to
Kabul. Just before reaching the capital, the caravan dispersed and the
trucks headed for a dozen villages scattered in the desert.

At Chinar, the welcome awaiting Mohammadullah was heartfelt but
meager. It took only minutes for all his family's worldly possessions
to be unloaded. Then, while the women and children hid in a back room,
his male relatives--who had arrived in an earlier convoy this
spring--offered a lunch of bread, potatoes and water.

One brother-in-law, 26, recounted the terrifying night when, as a
5-year-old, he and his family fled the Soviet bombing of Chinar with
only the clothes they wore. Now, the men complained, there was still
no school or electricity in the village, and 65 percent of the houses
were in ruins, including Mohammadullah's. But the wiry war veteran
seemed undeterred. He pointed to a new well built by a foreign aid
organization, and a new mud-walled mosque near his father-in-law's
house.

We had a good life here once, Mohammadullah said. I never
forgot my home and my country. Now we have a government that is on the
side of the people and on the side of Islam. I want to prepare the
ground and plant some trees, almonds and apricots and mulberries. This
is my soil and this is where I want to stay.